Rosh Hashana

It’s Rosh Hashanah (ראש השנה , for all you Unicode fans). That means it’s the Jewish New Year, although confusing, it’s actually the start of the seventh month in the Hebrew calendar, so it’s the same numerical Hebrew year (5769) as it was yesterday. Anyway, that’s how the Bible says to do it, so that’s how we do it.

I went to the Harvard Reform services, which were ok. The cantor’s microphone was flaky, and I didn’t particularly like the sermon. I generally don’t like sermons that turn into popularized neuropsych lectures. Maybe they work better for people less closely connected to this stuff, but when a Rabbi starts talking about right- and left-brain behaviors I lose a lot of interest.

I was at services with some friends, one of whom shrewdly observed that since we were all dressed up fancy, we should go out to eat somewhere nicer than usual. We settled on Dali, a tapas bar near Harvard (it’s right next to Evoo). It was actually much less expensive than I expected, and definitely a good investment in suit-time. Then we went back to his apartment for ice cream (it’s traditional to eat something sweet) and wound up discussing Fourier optics with his landlord, who had come over to debug a running toilet.

It was nice.

As the traditional benedictions say, may you be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life this year, and may we forgive all of our transgressions against each other.